


you bro-long with me

by damnspacebois (Race_Jackson23)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Humor, Gen, Lance is done, Multi, Oblivious Keith (Voltron), POV Lance (Voltron), Pining Shiro (Voltron), Romantic Angst, Romantic Comedy, Singing Keith (Voltron), Underage Drinking, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 19:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15802854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Race_Jackson23/pseuds/damnspacebois
Summary: Now, Lance wasn’t one to judge people for their kinks. He might be a dick at times, but he wasn’t an asshole. No, usually, he didn’t give two fucks what knocked people’s socks off, because it honestly wasn’t his business. As a younger brother, however … he was … wary. He was actually pretty far past wary, actually.Because Keith kept calling Shiro his brother when he so clearly wanted him to screw him into oblivion.tl;dr: lance finds out the brother thing isn't a joke. he's horrified into getting them together.





	you bro-long with me

**Author's Note:**

> So this was meant to be a oneshot...rip. Oh well.

Keith had started to weird Lance out.

Not that Lance wasn’t always weirded out by Keith. With the stupid mullet, the fucking alien knife he inherited from his mother, the poor socialisation skills – look, Lance could go on and on, the list would end up longer than Allura’s hair – something about him that just screamed odd. It had been obvious at the Garrison to pretty much everyone and in close quarters it was even worse. Finding out Keith’s part alien heritage had, in retrospect, explained _a lot_.

But that still failed to excuse the bizarre thing freaking Lance out. The, uh … _brother thing_.

Now, Lance wasn’t one to judge people for their kinks. He might be a dick at times, but he wasn’t an asshole. No, usually, he didn’t give two fucks what knocked people’s socks off, because it honestly wasn’t his business. As a younger brother, however … he was … wary. He was actually pretty far past wary, actually.

Because Keith kept calling Shiro his brother when he so clearly wanted him to screw him into oblivion.

~

The first time it happened, Lance almost missed it. Almost.

“Good job team,” called Shiro.

Amidst groans from the others, the former black paladin flashed an encouraging smile. If anything, that made him smile wider, unconcerned with the lack of enthusiasm or even revelling in it, but after having just finished practice, sore and tired from being thrashed by the sparring bot, he could hardly blame them for it.

All Lance wanted to do was kick back and not move for a thousand years, preferably with a drink in hand and preferably one of the alcoholic variety, if he could sneak it. It would be a break well-earnt, in his view. Considering that they’d had to deal with upping the assaults on the Galra Empire after having just recovered Shiro, and before that had to deal with being constantly chased by said Empire, a break was, like, _the least_ they were due. From the way everybody sans Keith started plodding their way from the training deck, he was inclined to think he wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“Uh,” murmured Shiro, hesitating as Keith waved him off and promptly started up the sparring bot. The space between his brows creased. Then he squared his shoulders, tone light as he exclaimed, “I might just join you! Two is always better than one.”

It was all Lance could do to maintain his breakfast in his stomach as Keith’s face split into a beatific smile. He turned away to follow the others, miming throwing up to an equally disgusted Pidge, and so he almost missed what Keith said next. Honestly, he would have been so much happier if he had and a thousand times less confused.

“Thanks bro.”

Everything slowed down. Pidge’s eyes went wide behind her glasses. Lance’s heart stopped. His brain ceased to function, all humanly reactions torn from him by two little words, and for a second he went into the light.

Then he was back and Hunk’s mouth was curving into the word ‘bro’ and it was all too much.

He snapped.

“Did you just ‘bro’ Shiro? You don’t say ‘bro’. Why did you call Shiro ‘bro’?”

Keith blinked. The expression on his face reminded Lance of the one his sister Veronica had when another of their cousins threw grape soda in her face. Having been audibly assaulted, Lance wished _he_ was the one with a grape soda to throw it in Keith’s face.

“Because he’s like a brother to me,” said Keith finally, looking around the training room at the others as if to suss out Lance’s deal.

But jokes were on him that cursed day, because the others were just as stunned as Lance. Or so he assumed, because he’d already descended to the last level of hell and there was no way for him to check. Considering the way they scrammed, though, and _left him_ in the _one situation_ where the sexual tension between their leader and second-in-command was _at its highest_ , chances were his guess was right.

~

The thing was, Lance wrote it off quickly. _Keith had an odd sense of humour_ , he reasoned to himself whenever his brain dared travel down that cursed path. Odd in that the things Keith thought were funny usually weren’t to everyone else. This was just … one of those things. The brother … _thing_ …  was probably just him making a joke or something about his and Shiro’s relationship(???why???), because while Keith looked like it with the dumb hair, he was hardly an idiot.

It took Keith calling Shiro some variation of brother four times for Lance to realise he had gravely overestimated Keith. _Gravely_.

The next time was like the first, only they’d all been in the dining room instead of the training deck and Coran’s newly waxed floors were to blame. A waxed floor, a single boot, and the worst of angles to step on.  To his credit, Keith made it partway to the table before The Great Slip™ destroyed everything good in the universe.

Keith’s foot stepped down and missed spectacularly. He flailed, arms windmilling. The bowl of goo he carried sailed through the air and landed on Coran’s head. For a moment, everyone thought he might have righted himself, but then his eyes went wide and he fell backwards and onto the floor.

Or would have. As if summoned by the mere possibility of Keith getting hurt, Shiro suddenly appeared – and it was sudden, because he’d been sitting at the table ribbing Keith for his wobbly walking like the rest of them literally one second before – pulling the younger man into his arms before his head could hit the floor. But that wasn’t the end of it, _no_ , because then Shiro slipped with a curse and they both tumbled down, their esteemed leader pillowing Keith’s fall.

Time appeared to stand still for the two of them as they both froze, Keith on top, and – Lance honestly could not believe this – _stared into each other’s eyes_.

Lance chanced a glance to his right where Pidge and Hunk had taken their seats and – _yep_ , they saw it too. The twin ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ looks wouldn’t be present otherwise.

Another moment passed. Finally, Shiro cleared his throat, seemingly coming to his senses. He got to his feet, wobbling slightly, offering a hand to Keith to pull him up as he went, and they were soon up and brushing fake dust off themselves, coughing piteously in a mockery of throat clearing.

“Uh,” stammered Keith, his face flushed the same colour as his jacket. “Thanks Ta– thanks, bro. For that.”

From his position at the table, the back of Shiro’s head was all Lance could see. _Good riddance_ , he thought, because having to deal with _both of them_ looking at each other like they’d hung the moon had no appeal to him in the slightest. And such was the first time that Lance missed the stutter in Shiro’s voice, the pulling together of his eyebrows, as he responded to Keith calling him his brother.

The next time he missed it too. Through the midst of his blurry recollection, he was pretty sure there had been some monster or another, and Shiro had saved Keith’s bacon. Cue the thanking with stupid “brother references”. At least it wasn’t kissing, but it still made Lance want to puke. Thinking back, missing Shiro’s reaction might have been more willful ignorance than not seeing it, because at that point Lance had still thought Keith was joking around. Perhaps the part of him wishing for that just manifested and blocked out all recollections of Shiro not being in on it, Lance wouldn’t put it past himself.

After that, though? After that, he noticed. The first inklings of something being odd – not Keith-odd, but actual-odd – slowly started to filter through, set off by the look on Shiro’s face as Keith brought up the brother thing yet again.

“You’re a good brother, Shiro,” Keith had said as Shiro helped him lift a metallic beam into place for Hunk and Pidge.

Lance didn’t have time to physically manifest his disgust before the beam fell to the floor with an almighty crash. With a litany of curses, Keith and Shiro jumped back from the heavy metal, escaping before it could pin their toes. Then everyone went into action, Hunk and Coran dropping their own beam, although much more carefully, to check on the two black paladins. Lance found himself in the middle of it too as Hunk and Coran fussed over them, much to their shaken amusement.

“Are you ok?” asked Lance when some of the excitement had died down and they were all getting back to it. Shiro nodded, but didn’t say anything. “Just ’cause I thought I saw you drop the beam. Just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“I’m fine,” Shiro assured him, though by the look on his face, he was anything but.

And see, Lance got it. Sometimes he just dropped things too. Not usually ridiculously heavy metal poles but then he didn’t usually go around carrying ridiculously heavy metal poles. If it were something else, though? Well, he’d probably been there too. There was enough embarrassing shit in his past that judging someone else would be hypocritical. Plus, Shiro was their super strong, super capable leader; he hardly needed someone like Lance questioning his shit. So he pushed it to the back of his mind with his cursed memories of Keith’s brother … _thing_ … where both would hopefully remain for eternity.

Should’ve learnt his lesson from their terrible luck as the Paladins of Voltron. Lance was far too hopeful a human being after that.

One terrible, horrible night, when they’d all taken up residence in the common area for the only downtime they’d managed since Shiro returned to them, Lance’s understanding of the universe was set on fire. Obliterated. Chewed up by Red and spat out into a wormhole.

It wasn’t until _then_ that it occurred to Lance just what had Shiro so upset. That the brother thing was hardly a joke between lovers and that Keith had been serious about it the _whole damn time_.

Things at their bonding session had gotten sappy quickly. Such tended to happen when nunvil got involved, of course. Three drinks in left them all light-headed and giggly, then Pidge, in all her drunken wisdom, demanded they play truth or dare. Things devolved from there.

“Truth,” snickered Keith when Lance finished his thirty second headstand. Seemingly ignoring the flushed red of his cheeks, the red paladin took another swig of his drink, grimacing at the taste before repeating, “Truth.”

Lance grinned.

“No jokes this time!” he crowed. Keith frowned. “How do you really feel about Shiro?”

Keith’s expression twisted into something complicated, inexplicable. His lips parted as if to say something before he thought better of it. Beside him, Shiro’s face pulled into a frown.

“Lance,” he said, his voice levelling a certain degree of warning.

“What?” said Lance. He held his palms up in mock innocence. “It’s a fair question!”

The unimpressed look Shiro levelled at him almost made it not worth the line of questioning. Almost, because his face then contorted into something that could only be described as _weird_ yet _mildly interested_. He, strangely, said nothing else, and so Keith was left floundering as he became the subject of the group’s sudden attention.

“Uh, Shiro’s my … Shiro’s the most important person in my life. He’s the only person who stood by me, even when I made it hard for him, and for that I will always – _always_ – be grateful for his presence in my life.”

The alcohol coursing through his veins was all that had him second-guessing, but Lance could’ve sworn he heard Keith’s voice catch. So did everyone else, he figured, from the way intent eyes started watching Keith’s cheeks flush further. The red paladin’s eyes widened and he gaped, apparently lost for words until his expression shuttered and he said something that Lance couldn’t blame the alcohol for misunderstanding.

“Shiro’s like a brother to me.”

And shit. Lance had known Keith was oblivious at the best of times, but he hadn’t known he was that oblivious.

Neither had, apparently, Shiro.

No amount of nunvil in the universe possessed the ability to erase that devastated expression from Lance’s brain. Gone almost the second he saw it, that painfilled face was only there a split second – certainly not long enough for a Keith avoiding eye contact to see – but it was _there_ , clear as day even to alcohol-fogged eyes. Mouth parted, eyebrows drawn, Shiro simply stared at Keith with the most heartbroken look on his face that Lance had ever seen on a human being ever. Then it was gone, consumed by a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Thank you, Keith,” he said softly. “I feel the same way.”

His voice broke on that last word. Only Keith failed to notice it.

By some unspoken signal, the night came to a close. As everyone else’s muttered goodnights registered dimly in his head, Lance stayed rooted to the spot. He almost missed – and how much better would that have been on his emotional state, huh? – the sad yet vaguely accusatory look Shiro shot him as his brain worked overtime to comprehend everything that had just happened.

Before that moment, he just assumed Keith and Shiro were a thing. Like, romantic-styles. Honestly, that was their vibe. After all, he’d seen Keith’s eyes trained on Shiro’s ass far too often for it to be platonic, and Shiro was hardly a saint in return. Then, the whole ‘revolving-around-each-other’ thing that they did too, a kind of hyper-awareness of each other that always had them adjusting whenever they were in the same space. On that, also, if one was somewhere, the other wasn’t that far behind. And those soft smiles they shared when they thought everyone preoccupied by their various endeavours, the way they seemed to be able to communicate without saying anything.

It was all very ‘this is the love of my life’.

 _Apparently not_ , the logic side of his brain supplied while the other half screamed.

~

So yes, weirded out.

Really, who would blame him? For one, he’d always thought it a given that Shiro and Keith - #sheith, if you will – were knocking socks. And since he’d always thought that, while the brother thing was weird, he was never worried for Keith’s sanity any more than usual because Lance was a good dude who didn’t question other people’s kinks and kept to his own lane.

But after finding out he was wrong? After realising that Keith thought his relationship with Shiro was brotherly?

Weirded out didn’t cut it. It didn’t lend the gravity necessary to the depths of his utter shock and pain and revulsion. He was … he just … basically, it was too much.

So he did the only sensible thing he could in that situation: he got help.

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat to me on [tumblr!](https://damnspacebois.tumblr.com)


End file.
